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R. Bownds Author of Australian Mysteries - News - Freebies - October Newsletter 2026
Published 27 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader it's time once again to touch base.
My father was a farmer who turned his hand to anything where he could make enough money to feed the family. We trapped rabbits throughout Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Mined gold for some time in Western Australia. Dad also farmed wheat and sheep in Western Australia until a flood wiped out the crops and the bank threatened to foreclose. This was back in the 60s. Dad sold the farm, paid off the bank, and we moved back to South Australia, where he bought a service station. We didn’t stay there for long before we moved west to mine gold in Western Australia once again. Ours was a life on the road, shifting from state to state, farm to farm or mine to mine.
You may wonder about schooling. I went to school at a public school in Wudinna, South Australia, for the first two school years. We, my youngest brother, sister and myself caught the bus from Kyancutta every morning. The bus would stop at the Kyancutta general store, which was across the railway line from our house. We needed to make sure we were waiting at the bus stop before a train came through. The grain trains were extremely long, and if we had to wait for it to pass, we'd miss the bus. After we left Kyancutta, I did my schooling via correspondence, homeschooled by my mother until I left school aged fifteen.
Life was challenging, yet looking back through the haze of memories, I wouldn't trade it for the path our younger generations are walking now and will continue to walk, with all its pressures and changes.
Death and The Devil
Death and The Devil is still on track for a December 2026 release. Edits are going slow due to life's usual humps and bumps but getting there. Now, just over halfway through, the days are on countdown for the first chapters to appear in my proofreaders' inboxes.
Ravens Rest
In a town where everyone knows everyone, the truth has nowhere to hide.
When Sarah Mitchell is found dead in Room Six of the Ravens Rest Motel, Detective Wendy Matthews expects another case the town would rather forget. Sarah had fought hard to get clean. She let someone she trusted into that room. And the people who knew her best aren’t telling Wendy everything.
Working with her sharp-eyed partner, Detective Rakul Ali, Wendy follows a trail of uneasy witnesses, buried secrets and powerful local interests. The deeper she digs, the more the case threatens to expose what the town has worked hard to keep quiet.
But Wendy has her own unfinished business: a daughter growing distant, and a life she’s let the job consume. As pressure mounts to close the case, she must decide how far she’ll go for the truth—and what it might cost her to find it.
Ravens Rest is a gripping Australian crime novel about loyalty, corruption and the secrets that survive in small towns.
I have paperback copies, signed or unsigned, available through my website or direct through my Payhip store. Including glossy cover paperback copies of the short story Murder on the Murray.
These Ebooks below are only available through my website or Payhip store.
Ken Lyons is a budding Australian author looking to create a following before releasing his first novel.
Ken Lyons - Author
Justice waits in the shadows.
I was a cop in Australia for 32 years, spending 16 years as a crash investigator. Changing careers, I moved into the world of public libaries where I was library officer teaching people about technology. Now, I've joined those two worlds together and I'm a fledgling author of crime fiction.
Join me on my journey of discovery. I'll be sharing behind the scenes thoughts and processes, insights into my world of writing, and even some peeks into my first novel that brings real world crime into the mix.
Hello Reader it's time once again to touch base. I was sitting in the car outside the chemist yesterday, waiting for my partner to return, when a young man came down the street pushing a shopping trolley loaded with empty cans and bottles. He carried an overstuffed backpack on his shoulder and wore clothes which appeared to have been slept in. He paused at the street side garbage bin in front of our car and went through its enclosed rubbish searching for those empty treasures. We have our...
Hello Reader. Continuing our 1969 Queensland adventure. After cutting East, we headed north from Miles through Taroom and across the mountains towards Cracow. It wasn't raining in this part of Queensland, and the roads were dry, dusty, potholed, and rough. The mountain road, no wider than two vehicles. A sharp drop off on the downside and a steep bank of rocks, trees (both alive and dead) and underbrush on the other. Dad out in front with the car and caravan, my brother Des in the centre...
Hello Reader In my last newsletter I started the story of our trip from South Australia to Queensland back in 1969 including our encounter with the great train robber Ronald Biggs. After we dropped Ronald Biggs and the man he was travelling with off in St George we continued up the Moonie Highway. It was still raining and flood water lay everywhere to the point where it was dangerous to even drift one wheel off the bitumen in fear of being bogged or worse. Not great on a narrow road not much...
